


natural disaster, on the evening news

by arbitrarily



Series: archived [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-13
Updated: 2007-08-13
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: You'll grow up someday - we all do, eventually.





	natural disaster, on the evening news

**Author's Note:**

> Written August 2007.

 

_Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, “But he’s there! Potter’s there! Someone grab him!”  
  
Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from under sleeves.  
  
“Thank you, Miss Parkinson,” said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice. “You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House would follow.”  
_  
  
  
  
  
  
It starts with a phone call – how frighteningly simple is that?  
  
You are in Paris, you are in Berlin, maybe you’re in Prague; it might just be that these things, these ideas as straightforward and basic as where, when and why have ceased to have meaning in these last eight odd months – you’re not sure.  
  
What happens is easy enough: the telephone in your hotel room rings, alarmingly loud, and you jump a little, place a glass of water down on the provided desk with a little too much force and take the call. You probably left your better judgment behind, like a shadow, hovering somewhere near the window.   
  
“Miss Parkinson,” they say on the other end; you hold the phone a fair distance away from your ear. “You’ve been summoned. The Ministry of Magic requests your audience –  ”  
  
You make it stop there with an index finger to the receiver.  
  
You hang up with a nod you imagine they can see, in space, all-knowing, through the open drapes against the window, the day.  
  
See, you had been watching that couple under the umbrella, at the table on the corner, when they found you yet again.  
  
“I’m sure they do,” you whisper after the fact, and – you silly, stupid, little _girl_ – you wonder why that empty pane of glass doesn’t answer back.  
  
You never wonder how it is they found you, _again_.  
  
  
  
  
  
In this town? There is a bell tower tolling every quarter hour and you try to ignore the gooseflesh that rises with every _ding, dong, ding, dong_ (see, you’re wondering still how Daddy – _oh_ , Daddy – is ever going to forgive you _this_ ).  
  
“Muggles,” he used to curse. “Don’t know how they do it, day in, day out.”  
  
Why is it that you remember this with a note of admiration on his part? Funny how memory colors, shifts, isn’t it?  
  
  
  
  
  
Your family used to specialize in moral ambiguity, and your father should be proud for you’ve picked the talent up in spades.  
  
Your Daddy? He was a company man even when he ran out of business to attend to. But you know this all already. Otherwise? You wouldn’t be running across cobblestone in cities with histories you never had an interest in learning.  
  
If this was another world and if you lived the life of any other girl, you might have been one of those pretty little students that wiles away her hours in the corner of dimly lit coffeehouses debating the merits and the implicit flaws to be found in moral relativism and the like. But you’re not; don’t get those hopes up.  
  
  
  
  
  
You’ve always been a fast learner, and this? This is really no exception.  
  
You learn both the hard and fast way just how exactly Muggle money works, thin paper folded in your back pocket, you ripped a couple bills that first time but it doesn’t really matter – they let you pay for bland coffee and scones and a small room at the top of the stairs all the same.  
  
You read Charles Dickens because it was cheap, a corner store buy, and you laugh, carpet bag hanging off your wrist, over how apt and easily this fits.  
  
You pick up culture through the television, the volume always turned up just a little too loud; there are sitcoms that aren’t funny, try as they might, and the news is bland and tragic in that mundane sense.  
  
You ride trains that don’t offer chocolate frogs and you’re slowly losing the urge to reach for a wand you no longer carry.  
  
And I imagine it’s a little embarrassing, but you truly enjoy the free range of fashion selections, don’t you? You left all your cloaks, your robes behind (and there’s no way you’d know this otherwise, but your mother? She still sometimes cries at night, takes refuge in your closet, her face lost in the hems of your old school robes, your father lost somewhere behind bars).  
  
Your figure suits a pair of dark jeans quite well. You’re almost enjoying this, aren’t you?  
  
  
  
  
  
It transpired fast enough. Draco and his family sang pretty, cried foul play, told tale after sloppily spun tale in a vain attempt to illustrate themselves as victims in this, just as much so as the rest of them.  
  
You see, they blamed your family. _It was the Parkinsons!_ they cried, there in the Ministry, the fresh paint still strong upon the walls. You had snorted at this, called it little more than bosh; your mother had wrung her hands and said quiet prayers you had no idea she knew.  
  
Daddy was arrested then. I’m curious: was this when you decided to run?  
  
  
  
  
  
You are in London now – ten paces too close to _home_.  
  
You slip into a pub and hide yourself behind a pint and a hat, low about your forehead, itchy.  
  
This is how he finds you, or maybe, perhaps, it’s how _you_ find him. The red hair marks him as difficult to miss and you might have stared a little too long and it was then his eyes settled on yours and that frown of his – if possible – deepened just a little more.  
  
“Weasley,” you say –  
  
and, “Parkinson,” he curses.  
  
  
  
  
  
The drinks multiply in that effortless style of youth and discontent and he downs two for your every one and if he was anyone else, you would admire this cliched machismo, and you know it.  
  
His eyes are sad, or maybe you’re just reflecting yourself onto him; you’re not really sure. You just find yourself longing to explain yourself, and to _him_ of all people. It’s laughable, really.  
  
“Our family,” you say and then you pause; _our family_ , two little words and he’s scowling at you already. Does it bother you at all? I only ask for you act as though it doesn’t faze you, not in the slightest. You might hold your half-gone pint a little tighter, all the same; you might clear your throat for no reason other than _time_ and the biding of it. These things don’t matter. He isn’t paying attention. Rather, he’s still fuming over you and your family and every other of your kind. “Our family was never like that, you know. About the blood thing. Sure, my father stood tall for tradition and maintenance of the status quo, of preserving our culture. He never meant it the way, you know – _he_ did.”  
  
“Can you still not say Voldemort?” he asks you with a sneer. He says that name like a badge of honor, as though a certain amount of bravery must be found before you can roll the syllables off your tongue. You might have recoiled a little at the name.  
  
“Some of us are still dealing with the aftershocks,” you shoot back, and that sneer of his evolves into a sad bark of a laugh.  
  
“Yeah? How many members of your family did you lose? Huh? How many friends have you buried, Parkinson?”  
  
“People don’t have to die in order for your world to fall apart, Weasley.”  
  
It’s then you realize you’ve revealed too much.  
  
Poor thing; he realizes it at the same time, too.  
  
“You got off easy, you know. You should have been tried. For, I don’t know, treason, or something.”  
  
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”  
  
“Aren’t we all?” he mutters under his breath, then wraps the words around a sip of his drink, whatever that murky brown is, swimming at the bottom of his mug. It offers a vaguely alcoholic scent, and for a half-mad flash, you think _medicinal_.  
  
You would never have painted Ron Weasley as a cynic, not back in those Gryffindor days of Hogwarts, brash and bold and eight different kinds of trouble. He always delivered it with a smile, but this? This is different.  
  
He has large hands. He lays them, palms flat, upon the table. He pulls them away, probably because he caught you watching. He leaves a moist handprint behind, upon the glossy wood.  
  
The fact he’s clearly as uncomfortable as you are isn’t as triumphant a feeling as you thought it would be. You wash it down and look away.  
  
You’re different now, too, you know.  
  
  
  
  
  
There’s a lost weekend here, at the Leaky Cauldron, where your wand sits still but not quite forgotten at the bottom of your bag and for the space of a second and a quick blink you almost consider calling him _yours_.  
  
You awaken to hail against the window.  
  
  
  
  
  
When you sleep with him – that first time, the second time, the time you were too drunk for it to really count – he never looks you in the eye. His eyes will watch your cheeks, trace along the bone; he’ll focus on your mouth and you’ll find yourself biting down on the soft swell of your bottom lip. This is when he’ll usually look away, the top of his head, red hair, brushes against your chin.  
  
He’ll growl against your ear the start to a name he’ll never finish, and you? You’ll act it doesn’t matter, but your fingernails will dig that much further into his skin.  
  
He has pretty eyelashes; you’ll allow him that. And, yes, you like to watch them flutter shut against the tops of his cheeks as he comes –  
  
“how’d we get so lost?” you whisper, late, against his shoulder, and like a gentleman, he wraps his arms around you.  
  
(See, Daddy? People _can_ still surprise).  
  
  
  
  
  
“It’s nice to be among proper wizards again,” you say with a smirk, breakfast cooling on your plate, and the humor seems to fall lost with him. He doesn’t smile, he just watches out the window, searching something in the distance. You imagine the other buildings, taller still, mar his view; you know it isn’t you that he’s looking for.  
  
But, you see. You also don’t really give a damn what it is he’s so angry about.  
  
“Always a woman,” you mutter and tie your hair up in a knot.  
  
(This time? You’re right. But know this, child: he’s never going to confess to this).  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s over by nightfall, whatever loose camaraderie you’ll come to view this as.  
  
You fight. You fight over things as tight and unchangeable as the past, and you dare to mention _her_ name, and worse still, he mentions _his_.  
  
“We all had alliances, Weasley,” you say and the scorn is thick upon your lips, matched heavy on his brow. “You of all people must understand _that_.”  
  
He leaves you the room for the night –  
  
Funny. You miss the television you called company once before.  
  
  
  
  
  
Tomorrow:  
  
Your heels strike loud against the marble of the Ministry’s floor and you swallow hard, your throat still too tight.  
  
You’ve lost weight, little bird, and your old clothes hang about your frame. You finger the ends of your sleeves, bite the inside of your cheek, try to stave off worry. It doesn’t really work; you still look as though someone has danced about your grave: eyes bright and shiny, pale, wan skin.  
  
“Ah,” they say. “We’ve been waiting.”  
  
  
  
  
  
You’ve gotten quite good at lying, not that you weren’t at the outset – Draco always hated this about you. Did you know? He hated the way the truth and its opposite could slip so sweetly from your lips, but maybe what he hated more was that he never could _not_ believe you. Your delivery has always been impressive.  
  
“Now, Miss Parkinson,” I ask, “can you explain to the court the extent of your family’s involvement with one Lord Voldemort and his followers, the Death Eaters?"  
  
You raise your chin, proud.  
  
You’re ready for this now, aren’t you?  
  
  
  
  
  
You leave with something one might call freedom, who knows. That almost smile gracing your lips looks like something new, something fresh, and as you fingers curl around a doorknob, you collide with something familiar, solid (the past?).  
  
“Harry Potter,” you say, in lieu of _hello_.  
  
He shakes your hand and smiles.  
  
  
  
  
  
You were lost, little girl, but you already knew that. Right?  
  
You hold your wand between your fingers, and you’ll swear it – it feels as though you never left.  
  
You whisper and the front door opens with a _click_.  
  
You hear your mother’s footsteps.

 

 


End file.
